We suspected this, but now it's clear that NVIDIA's end game when it picked up PhysX-maker AGEIA was to integrate physics processors into graphics cards. Right now, they're porting the PhysX engine over to run on GeForce 8s, and it'll be a simple software download, bringing some additional physics-crunching juice to current cards. The next step is a GPU with an onboard specialized physics processor.

"encourage people to buy even better GPUs. It might—and probably will—encourage people to buy a second GPU for their SLI slot. And for the highest-end gamer, it will encourage them to buy three GPUs. Potentially two for graphics and one for physics, or one for graphics and two for physics."